"He opened the second seal...another horse, fiery red, went out... it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another...." (Rev. 6:3)
The “next big thing” in the news may well be war with Iran. Few want it, many warn against it and many more will suffer if it comes to pass. How can we forestall it? (NB: see Post #1 and go from there; see bottom of page.)
"War is the unfolding of miscalculations." (Barbara Tuchman)

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Post #399 - Quiz, continued

[This began with Post #396.]

5. During
the past forty years, which country/countries faced an existential
threat?

A.
Israel and the United States

B.
Kuwait and Iran

C.
Kurdistan and Palestine

D.
Egypt and Syria

E.
All of the above

Answer:
B -- Israel & the United States have talked the
most about being threatened. The Kurds & the Palestinians have
been threatened plenty, but since they don't yet "exist" in any
official sense, they can't be threatened with non-existence. Both
Egypt and Syria may end this decade looking far different, but they
will still be Egypt and Syria.

Kuwait
could easily have become just a province of Iraq; Iran could have
fallen to Iraq in the bloody Iran-Iraq War during the early '80s.
Virtually no one was supporting Iran against the aggression of
Saddam. Iraq had the support of the West. Moreover, we have 5 times
the population of Iran and the GDP of the United States is 68 times
that of Iran -- not surprising? But our expenditures on the military
are 110 times those of Iran. Little countries often expend huge
amounts of their national wealth on armaments -- for a while, some
African countries were throwing about up to 50% of their treasure
into fighting internal or cross-border wars or preparing for them.
Iran is not in that category.

Official
U.S. Government official documents (this is from a 1995 Pentagon
policy statement) do not leave much doubt about what is driving our
actions:

"The
broad national security interests and objectives expressed in the
President's National Security Strategy and the Chairman's National
Military Strategy form the foundation of the US Central Command's
theater strategy. The NSS directs implementation of a strategy of
dual containment of the rogue states of Iraq and Iran as long as
those states pose a threat to U.S. interests, to other states in the
region, and to their own citizens. Dual containment is designed to
maintain the balance of power in the region without depending on
either Iraq or Iran. USCENTCOM's theater strategy is interest-based
and threat-focused. The purpose of U.S. engagement, as espoused in
the NSS, is to protect the United States' vital interest in the
region - uninterrupted, secure U.S./Allied access to Gulf oil."
(Keep in mind, also, that we do
not just spend an enormous amount of money on military preparedness
-- our military itself uses about 350,000
barrels of oil per day.)

6.
From what country did Iran first source nuclear technologies?

A.
Pakistan

B.
Russian Federation

C.
United States

D.
North Korea

E.
None of the above

That
would be C. President Eisenhower first encouraged Iran to begin a
nuclear energy program, and supplied the technologies to get it
started.

The
Washington Post reported that in 1976 the Ford administration
“endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry,
but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that
would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and
enriched uranium - the two pathways to a nuclear bomb.” Noam
Chomsky has pointed out that “the top planners of the Bush
administration, who [in 2007 were] denouncing these programs, were
then in key national security posts: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and
Paul Wolfowitz.” Chomsky quotes Henry Kissinger as saying recently
that Iran's seeking of nuclear energy capability would be "a
wasteful use of resources." But, in the time of the Shah, when
Kissinger was secretary of state, he said it would "provide for
the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves
for export or conversion to petrochemicals." Kissinger's
explanation for the discrepancy?-- that before the revolution "they
were an allied country."

A
study of nuclear in the energy economies of thirty countries done by
IAEA showed European countries heavily reliant on nuclear fission as
source of energy: 78% of France's electricity, 72% in Lithuania, 54%
for Belgium. Other countries have oil or gas, but still choose to
have nuclear as part of the mix: Russia and Canada at 16%, the United
States and the UK at near 20%.

Iran
has crude petroleum to sell, but lacks refining capabilities to fill
more than a fraction of its future energy needs through fossil fuels
internally. Nuclear energy represents a diversification of its
energy portfolio as a hedge against rapidly evolving technologies,
changing energy markets and the vagaries of international politics.

If
the premier economic powerhouse of the world, the US, can't solve the
energy conundrum without splitting atoms, why is Iran expected to
accomplish it, with an economy smaller than that of the State of
Missouri? Given that some 60% of Iranians are under the age of 30, a
population boom can be expected during the coming years, like the one
America saw after the Second World War.